Taking some time to get some thoughts down

 I'm not sure how I would even describe the last two days. We have gotten some incredibly good news and then some incredibly sad news and I'm having very hard time processing how they both can happen at the same time. 

We are still out of town and as we were getting ready on Thursday to go meet with a real estate agent my older sister called. I assumed it was going to be a question about the kids' homework or what they would or wouldn't eat for lunch but she told me that she had just heard from a second-cousin of ours who had lost everything in the North Carolina flooding. I don't want to seem like I am taking on his tragedy or seeking sympathy. Aside from annual Christmas letters, I haven't seen him in about 11 years since he and his fiancé at the time came to my sister's wedding. He's 33, so between me and my older sister so we grew up close and definitely had one of those "flirty cousin" relationships and I always remember being incredibly jealous when he would chose to play with my sister over me. He has two kids that are roughly the same age as ours. He and his wife had gotten a divorce and she had moved the kids to the Asheville area to be closer to her family. All the family thought it was great news that he was moving to North Carolina to be closer to his kids and over the summer they announced that they were reconciling. Only now to lose everything. What makes it even sadder is that my great aunt (my dad's cousin) hadn't been able to get in touch with him, the kids or his ex-wife for several days and suffered more or less by herself because she didn't know what else do to. The good news is that they are all safe (including the family pets) but they pretty much lost everything. Because they were still living in separate houses, I guess there was some hope that at least one of the houses would be saved but her house was flooded to the point of being uninhabitable while his was washed away entirely. The fact that they were reconciling and he was at the house in Asheville when the rains started may have actually saved his life. His house was along a highway outside of Asheville and the whole town is now gone. My sister is trying to talk him into bringing his family to Texas because we have more than enough room to get them through at least until they know more but he says things are so uncertain right now, even thinking of how they would get out of North Carolina is a daunting prospect. 

Bubs is beside himself too, the unit he flew with over the summer was activated and deployed two or three crews. They called him and asked him if there was any way he could be an augmentee because they are still short personnel and he had to explain to them that until his ankle is cleared by the flight surgeon he can't fly. Nobody in his situation ever wants something like this to happen but I know it's killing him to have been at this for so long and not be able to say yes to a civilian search and rescue because of a very dumb accident. Considering the circumstances,  we are both being extra nice to each other.  

Last night we had dinner with Bub's new civilian boss and his wife. They were very nice and I like this man so much better than his current supervisor. There are two main reasons we are doing this move, one is Bubs was able to transfer to a new reserve unit that will be so much closer which will save him all the travel time and expense he was having to bear. The second is quality of life in his "main" job. In his current position, he is essentially on call all of the time. It's very normal that he will get called out of bed at 2am to answer a single question from a factory in the Philippines or plan to hold meetings while the kids and I are eating dinner. First of all, his new job is mostly US based so he'll be on US time which in itself is huge. Secondly and more importantly, except for surge times, his new boss basically believes that his employees need to have successful family lives and wants them to shoot for 40 hour work weeks. There are 3 mandatory office days per week but Bubs is actually looking forward to that since he's been all work from home since the pandemic. Both the new boss and his wife were just very cheerful people and she asked if she could be an honorary grandmother to the kids and promised to set me up with the Ob/gyn that her daughters-in law went to. Even knowing those little things are such a huge help.  His new boss said two things which about made me fall out of my chair. First of all, this was supposed to be a lateral move, same pay, same employment scale, but the new boss had managed to get Bubs a pretty signifgant raise as well an increase in his employment scale. I don't remember the exact quote but it was something like "not everyone who has done your job has a "C" in their title, but every one in the company who has a "C" in their title now has done your job."  I didn't quite catch on to what he was saying so I had to get my husband to clarify on the way back to our hotel and it basically means that the job he's moving into is seen as an essential stepping stone into positions like COO, CFO, etc. It's incredible news, of course there's no guarantee but it was never going to happen if he stayed in the more or less dead end position he's in now. If anyone deserves it for how hard he's worked, it's my husband. 

So those are the two extremes I'm trying to mentally process right now. A family member who has essentially lost everything and can't even plan hours ahead to figure out how he can leave a disaster area. And me and my husband getting incredible news and validation that moving away from Texas is the right decision.   I can't quite make sense of it and I have so much guilt right now that I don't even know what to do with it. Usually typing it out helps but I'm not so sure today. 

On to another topic, I've been trying to read through all the comments and this site just makes it so hard to interact. One thing I know I've seen is people asking me to write about certain topics and I love this idea. I know one was asking me to say a little more about what it was like growing up in Texas and another was asking me to talk more about the positive things that happened during the Mexico trip and the positive things that have happened after. I'm happy to do both as I want this space to be a very honest record of what has transpired and what has gotten me here. I don't want anyone to feel left out so if you have something you would like to ask me or want me to write about, please feel free to email me. I don't want to say anything is off limits (which may be a mistake) but I will caveat that I may not answer things that are offensive or seem trollish. Please keep in mind that for about a week I had about 20,000+ separate comments calling me every name in the book and I'm still a little sensitive to some things. But I try to balance that against being honest and moving forward from a big mistake that I made. I know some of you have already emailed me, I'm trying to avoid email while on this trip but I promise I'll check once I get into my routine back home--and if there are any requests for topics, I'm happy to talk about them. 

the email address is: danniynnad@gmail.com